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Marie Curie Discovers Radium
Marie shared a nobel peace prize in physics in 1903 for work in radioactivity. Marie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes in the 1920's. -
The cure-all Radium craze sweeps the world
"People knew that radioactivity released energy. And they didn't see how adding some energy to their bodies could possibly be harmful" --Timothy Jorgensen Radium was put in everything from water, cosmetics, food, and digested for medicine. One person drank radium water every day.... until they died. "The radium water worked fine until his jaw came off." "Radium products were used for any ailment where lack of energy was seen to be the root cause -- from common fatigue to impotence." -
The Watch Dial factory opens in Newark, New Jersey
The Radium Luminous Materials Corporation opens a watch dial factory in New Jersey Radium is at a peak value of $120,000/gram ($2.2 million today) Dial painting was advertised as a wonderful job for women that paid well. Another factory, The Radium Dial Studio Opens in Ottowa Illinois Octobe 25th, 1922. -
Radium is in high demand from the war's economic boom
The factory's demand skyrockets from the war, expanding to have radium extraction, labs, and radium processing plants. The women who worked at the factory were given decent wages, being paid by the dial, and they can paint faster if they dip the radium covered brushes in their mouth for a finer tip. 375 girls were dial painters at the peak. Workers were were encouraged to use their mouth to work. Some even ate the paint because they liked how it tasted. -
Girls start to get sick
Even though the girls were told the radium was harmless, many girls start to get achy joints especially in their jaw, get really tired, and sick. One girl got sores in her mouth after working just a month. One girl (Katherine Schaub) became very prone to acne and consulted a doctor who suggested phosphorus could be the problem, but she wasn't sure if that is what she worked with. -
The girls question the source of injury and death from the Radium factory
The first death occurred in 1922, when 22-year-old Mollie Maggia died after a year of pain. Although her death certificate erroneously stated that she died of syphilis, she was actually suffering from a condition called "radium jaw." -
The company covers up the problems
Yet it would take another two years before the company that owned the factory, the United States Radium Corporation, took any action at all, through an independent investigation commissioned mostly to investigate the declining business rather than the health of the workers. -
The girls fight back with a lawsuit
In 1925 Grace Fryer, one of the workers from the original New Jersey plant, decided to sue, but she would spend two years searching for a lawyer willing to help her. She finally filed her case in 1927 along with four fellow workers, and made front-page news around the world. -
restrictions apply to workers
The case, settled in the women's favor in 1928, became a milestone of occupational hazard law. By this time, the dangers of radium were in full view, the lip-pointing technique was discontinued and the workers were being given protective gear. Even more women sued, and the radium companies appealed several times, but in 1939 the Supreme Court rejected the last appeal. -
Their legacy lives on; almost everything we know about radiation inside the human body, we owe to the Radium Girls
Some of the effects would only be felt much later in life through various forms of cancer. Radium has a half-life of 1,600 years. The legacy of the Radium Girls lives on through our scientific understanding of the effects of radioactivity. During the Cold War, many agreed voluntarily to be studied by scientists, even with intrusive examinations because they had been exposed for prolonged periods of time.
